


Sad Drunk Piano

by hanktalkin



Series: Colorswapped Universe [2]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Piano, Post WAR!, Regret, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 00:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7245724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/pseuds/hanktalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say when you hiccup, it is because he kisses someone else and thinks of you.</p><p>This takes place in between chapters 7 and 8 of Cyclical, but I think it does better as a stand-alone piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sad Drunk Piano

“Tavish? Can I talk to you?”

The RED Demoman jerked awake. Previously, he had been sitting on a destroyed armchair at the back of the common room for the past half hour pretending to watch TV. Or at least, it seemed like a half an hour. Judging from the dark windows and the fact that the team had evacuated the area, it had been much longer.

“Wha? Hmmmrwhadoyehwanttutalkaboot?” He slurred.

His head was killing him. The hangover had started to set in, and he reached for the bottle of scrumpy leaning against the chair. As everyone knows, the best way to combat a hangover is to go right back to being drunk before it can grab you by the breeches and smash your head in. Tavish took a swig.

“I want to talk about…I wanted to ask you something,” Soldier said, standing a few feet away from the armchair of misery.

That was odd. Soldier was never hesitant about anything, not as long as Tavish had known him.

“Well go on lad, spit it out,” Tavish replied as he blinked that last bits of sleep from his eye.

“What started the WAR?”

Scrumpy shot from Tavish’s nose as he choked mid drink. What the fuck? He must have misheard. Solider wouldn’t be asking him about that, not now.

“What war?” Tavish asked innocently, praying to God he meant the war of RED and BLU and not the one where he had killed his best friend hundreds of times for a haunted sword.

“The class war,” Soldier said, and Tavish’s heart sank. “I do not know if you remember it, it was five years ago, but, uh, you and the BLU Soldier were fighting, and then the Administrator had me fight the BLU Demoman and then we all got new weapons out of it. Well, I was wondering what started it all? I mean I fought, but I never knew _why_. So, since you were there at the beginning, I thought I could ask you.”

This could not be happening. He had never talked about it, not with his mother, not with his team, not even with random bartenders he happened to come across on particularly terrible nights. Why was Soldier asking him now after years burying the past?

Soldier was staring at him. It had been half a minute and he still hadn’t responded to the question.

“Well, me and the BLU Soldier had a feud, you see.”

He froze, realizing he had no idea what to say next. Could he make up a lie? Say the BLU hand insulted his honor and leave it at that? No one had ever asked him before; either they already knew or they didn’t care. Not even Soldier had asked him anything until this very moment. His friend’s face was a torrent of concern, letting him know that he must look a mess: sitting here, drunk, barely able to form a sentence. It was the same look Jane would give him. It was the same look because it was the same face; not only that, it held the same tenderness of someone who cared about him.

But Jane didn’t look at him like that anymore. There was nothing but complete and utter contempt on his face every time the saw one another across the arena. A special type of hatred that can only be made by betrayal.

“We were feudin’ because…er…”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t force himself to come up with a reason why the things happened the way they did.

Soldier was still giving him the look.

And, hell, didn’t he deserve to know the truth? Soldier had died nearly as many times as Tavish, and he hadn’t even gotten an explanation. He was just dumped into the middle of the WAR like so many crates of ammo. Tavish swallowed. Fuck it.

“I’ll tell you about it, but we’re goin’ tae sit on the couch. I dunnae like you loomin’ over me.”

The couch was significantly less destroyed than the chair. Almost all the springs were still in tact; it even had a throw pillow that wasn’t lost during the mercenaries’ occupation. As they sat, Tavish glanced at the camera above their heads out of habit.

Three years ago, things had started going very wrong with the war effort. The first to go dark were the cameras inside the bases, and then ones near the spawn areas and outer battleground. Soon, only one or two cameras were active per map. After that, the loudspeakers became unreliable, having long delays or just saying things that were flat out wrong. Miss Pauling stopped giving employee reviews. Communication with RED command, already rather limited, became entirely through the Administrator. And even when she sent messages to her mercenaries, Tavish got the feeling they were listening to a pre-recorded message.

But, at the end of the day, the checks kept coming. The points still worked, the cart still moved, and the intelligence still needed to be defended. It felt like they had been abandoned, but what was there to do about it? So they stayed, living with the knowledge that they could be watched at anytime, but with the fear they probably weren’t.

“I’m goin’ tae tell you somethin’,” Tavish began, “but it’s got tae stay between us, you hear me?”

Soldier nodded, arms wrapped tightly around the throw pillow.

“Well, you may not believe it, but me and the BLU Soldier used tae be friends.”

Soldier’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

“Back then, back when the Administration actually gave a damn about what the hell we were doin’, we had tae keep everythin’ a secret. Eventually she found out, and told RED all about us. After that, instead of firin’ me, she…” Tavish swallowed at the memory. “She said that I could keep me job if I agreed tae kill him.”

Hugging the pillow to his chest, Soldier stared at him with eyes wide. “And you did?”

“No!” Tavish protested. “Nae…nae at first. Pauling gave me some weapons but I told them no, I wouldn’t do it but…then she told me that BLU had given Jane the same offer. And he accepted.”

Soldier blinked. “Jane?”

Fuck, he was giving away too much. Tavish tried to steady himself, getting the ache in his head and his heart under control.

“Aye, that’s the other Soldier’s name,” Tavish said, trying to play it off casually.

“And…he betrayed you?”

Tavish wavered. “…Yeah. He took the deal. And I dinnae really have any choice after that. So I took the sword, killed him, and started the WAR.”

It was the same story he had told himself for years. That Jane had been the betrayer. That he would never have taken that deal if the BLU hadn’t started it. But in the years of alcohol and loneliness, he had begun to doubt.

Lord did he doubt.

Reaching and arm across, Soldier put a hand on Tavish’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend Tavish. It seems like you lost him twice.”

Friend. That was another part of the story that was a lie.

All at once the hand on his shoulder was too much. When you spend most of your time fighting people who are identical to your teammates, it becomes easy to compartmentalize things. That Scout you hate, but this Scout is always good for a laugh. One Medic can be a beacon of hope in the middle of a fight, but you better be ready to chop the other’s one’s head off as soon as you see him. But now things seemed hazy. Perhaps it was his compromised state, but the hand on his shoulder suddenly felt all too familiar.

“Thanks for telling me,” Soldier finished, giving the shoulder a squeeze. Tavish’s stomach lurched.

As Soldier got up to leave, Tavish reached for the bottle again. He didn’t need to think about the WAR, and he certainly didn’t need to think about the feeling that had just passed through him. What he needed was to pass out and pretend this entire conversation hadn’t happened.

* * *

He couldn’t.

Try as he might the feelings he thought he buried under bottles and bottles of scrumpy kept resurfacing. Over the next few days, he tried to drink it down, focus entirely on his work; that usually helped during particularly bad spells that had plagued him for the past five years.

But this time it wasn’t working. Days passed, his battle prowess began to suffer, and the rest of RED noticed. He stopped hanging in the common room after dinner, trying to avoid their judgmental eyes, instead going straight to his bunk or the music room. Not every base had a piano but a lot of them did, more than any normal warzone should; he was lucky that Sawmill was one of them. Without that piano, there would be nothing to distract him from the sorry state of his life.

Visions of Jane haunted him. They were mostly the same: the fist time Jane had killed him, the day he looked through the gate and seen Jane wearing those God-awful boots. It was like reliving the whole WAR over again. Wanting to make him pay, hating him, but ultimately loosing something along the way, something that kept the anger alive. He didn’t feel angry anymore. Just…empty.

The WAR wasn’t the only thing haunting him, however. There were other memories, memories from before. One in particular kept circling him, attacking him when he least expected, reminding him how things used to be. Worst of all, he could hardly focus on it. Thinking about the memory was like holding up a photograph to the light, and only seeing your fingers through faint lines and shapes. Only a week before the WAR. Jane’s apartment. The TV was on. Tavish had said something, Jane had laughed. “You won’t get rid of me that easy,” he said. “I would never want to,” Tavish had responded. He thought it went like that. That’s all he remembered. Insignificant. But it wasn’t.

He had said the word “never.” They always avoided those words: never, always, forever. Their relationship was forbidden in every sense of the word; they couldn’t plan for the future when every day they risked discovery. But at that moment, lying on Jane’s couch, fingers intertwined, he had imagined what their hands would look like with rings on them.

“After RED and BLU” wasn’t even a concept back then. They had found their dream jobs! They were immortal! Why would they ever consider a time when they wouldn’t work for the two warring factions?

Now, when it seemed like the war was ending, Tavish wasn’t so sure. If RED disbanded, if they finally decided the stalemate was a lost cause, what would he do? He’d have to find more work. Start from scratch, make new friends at a new job.

Not that he had many friends here. Sniper had been his mate once, he was sure of it, and he and Engie used to talk all the time about chemicals and things, even if their areas of expertise were a tad different. But he had pushed his coworkers away, just like he had everyone else. The only person he still had was his Mum, and she wouldn’t be around forever.

That thought scared more than the loss of RED. If Mum was gone, he would have nothing. No family, no responsibility, no DeGroot family name to uphold. No one to miss him if he was gone. Maybe, when Mum died, he could just…stop. Stop existing. Stop carrying on when he didn’t have reason to.

And that thought was most concerning of all.

He knew he needed to talk to someone about all this, but he had become so estranged from everyone on the base, he couldn’t approach anyone. Only Soldier didn’t care that he was moody and always drunk; that man was harder to get rid of than a bad rash. But talking to Soldier was out of the question. He didn’t want look at that face again, the one that reminded him so much of Jane. In fact, he didn’t even want to be _in the same room_ as Soldier until he had gotten a hold on himself.

That proved to be out of his control.

“Tavish? You in here?”

Tavish’s fingers hit a sour note on the keys as Soldier’s voice came from the hallway. Damn it. He was drunk enough to consider saying “no, no one’s in here,” but Soldier was already poking his head in the door.

Even worse, he was just wearing a white t-shirt, no distinctive red uniform to help Tavish’s mind sort things out. Tavish ignored him, staring at the sheet music blankly.

“I thought we could talk, if you had a minute.” Soldier shifted back and forth on his feet before deciding to join Tavish on the bench.

Tavish put his hands back to the keys, playing half Piano Sonata No.23 and half whatever came to his mind. The piano was old. The paint had peeled. The F# was broken. And, unfortunately, it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the man sitting beside him as he tried to comfort his friend.

“So the team’s noticed you have been performing inadequately.”

Great. Good job Soldier. Way to lead in.

“And you have seemed very…” Soldier paused. “…somber lately. I am worried about you. I thought maybe you have been sad because of a few days when I brought up the WAR. If so, I am sorry. I did not mean to open old wounds.”

“Well you did,” Tavish growled, covering up a botched measure.

Solder fidgeted. For a minute, the only thing between them was the meandering tune.

“You should not blame yourself,” Soldier tried again.

“Who says I’m blamin’ meself?”

“Because you are sad. If you blamed him, you would be angry.”

Tavish didn’t look up. How could Soldier do that? Look right through him and see the heart of it all. Sometimes he got the feeling Soldier was a lot smarter than he let on.

“It was not your fault,” Soldier continued. “He started the WAR. You did what you had to do.”

He couldn’t get to the keys on the left side of the piano without reaching over Soldier. He didn’t want to touch him.

“Did I?” Tavish put every ounce of bitterness he could muster into those two words. “There was _nothin’_ I could have done? I couldnae’ve said no anyway? Or left? I couldnae’ve at least _tried_ to talk to him-” He choked. There was a burning in his eye and he couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“Oh Jesus, uh, do not cry please.” Soldier patted him on the back in a desperate attempt to stem the flow.

It didn’t help much.

“Fuck,” Tavish sobbed, giving on playing entirely. “I could have called or tried to see him, I could have…fuck. What…what did I do to make him hate me so much?”

Soldier’s heart broke a little at that. Carefully, he pulled his sobbing friend into a hug.

Tavish wanted to push him away. The hug was suffocating, and it was painfully close to the real the thing. He _wanted_ to push away, but at the same time he wanted to be drawn in close, to be held like this again. It had been so long. So fucking long, and he was sniffing now, snot dripping from his nose as he heaved into Soldier’s shoulder. He pulled away, only a little, just enough to see Jane’s face staring back at him, looking so concerned so affectionate-

Tavish kissed him.

It was wet and sloppy and drunk but God it felt so good, and there was something buzzing at the back of his mind but he ignored it. The kiss was desperation for just for a hint of what they had once had but his brain kept trying to get his attention because Jane wasn’t kissing him back-

Oh. Oh right. Oh God.

He broke the kiss, looking at Soldier with dawning horror.

“Oh God. Oh God Mary I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry I-”

But Soldier wasn’t looking at him with contempt or disgust or even shock. Instead, Soldier’s blue eyes were filled with pity as they viewed the sniveling mess in front of them.

“It’s okay,” Soldier said. “I understand.”

And it wasn’t “I understand” as in “I forgive you,” it was exactly what it meant because Soldier really _understood_. Tavish had never felt more ashamed. He had no cards to his chest anymore, no secrets he could cling to for protection. He buried his head in Soldier’s shoulder once again.

They stayed like that for a long time, Soldier holding him while he wept. Eventually, Soldier must have helped him to his room. Tavish was too intoxicated to walk on his own, instead leaning on his friend until he was dropped on the bunk. Vaguely, he remembered someone taking off his boots, and removing the bottle from his hand. What he didn’t remember was someone putting a blanket over his still form, or clicking off the light as they departed. He was long gone by then. 


End file.
